Chapter 78: Sometimes an Ally

YOU KNOW, it’s not always Bob against the world. Or even Bob against some upstart king or emperor. Sometimes, I’m actually asked to intervene and become an ally. That happened back after Caesar was killed and Augustus became the ruler of Rome. That was also before I encountered the demon in the desert. I was deep in the Nubian Desert somewhere between what is now called the Nile River and the Red Sea, searching for a temple.

Cleopatra had told me where there were several ancient temples. She was extremely well-educated and spoke several languages. She was the first of the Ptolemys to learn the Egyptian language and was fluent in hieroglyphics, which she taught me during our time together. While her ancestor, Ptolemy I, founded the great Library of Alexandria, Cleopatra was a patron and great promoter of the library. I think it was for that reason that her brother/husband attacked and burned the building, even as I was rushing to evacuate as many scrolls and librarians as I could. I am still upset about the number of scrolls that were lost in that fire—some of which I had personally transported to Alexandria. Those, at least, had already been duplicated and stored in Areola.

Regardless, Cleo told me of a temple far to the south. She’d never traveled there because things were not always at peace between the Egyptians and the Kushites. However, she believed the temple of the god Amun was located there and may have been ancient when people first settled in lower Egypt. It took me a while to find the place. There was no trace of civilization there and I thought it must be buried under mountains of sand. It was quite by accident that I stumbled upon a fissure in the rocks and having passed through it, I found myself in a cool dry temple that was also quite empty. No books.

But it was certainly interesting. I had some of my people come out and begin copying the writing on the pillars and walls. It was a job that would take them a few weeks and they returned to the infinity room each night to sleep.

As I worked myself deeper into the temple, which I verified that like Cleo had suggested, was dedicated to Amun, I was impressed. This had been built near the same time I was building the temple to Namri and Ninra, but was much more substantial as it used stone, much as I had on Crete for the king’s palace. But farther into the depths of the temple, construction methods changed. I could see that much of the temple was made of the same kind of sand bricks I’d made in Bathra. I had to wonder if this was a common technique that all the gods knew and graciously passed down to me. These bricks were older than I was!

It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered a structure that was older than I was. The great pyramids were already half amillennium old when I was summoned into the world. But as I descended—yes, the path definitely sloped downward, even though spacious rooms had level floors—according to the descriptions I found, the temple dated to at least a millennium before my birth!

Originally, the god had been called Atum and was the creator of the world. My librarians informed me that according to this creation story, the world was covered with water until a mound—the very mountain we were inside—was thrust up out of the waves and on top of it was Atum, who created a man and his own wife and then the rest of the world.

Wow! I was impressed and bowed in reverence before the god, who might have had some remnant of presence in the ancient temple.

While my head was bowed, a light moved ahead of me, guiding my path until I came to a wall that moved when I pressed my hands on it. Behind that wall were coves stacked with ancient scrolls. The librarians carefully removed them and put them through the duplication spell. Then they reverently replaced the originals on the stone shelves where they had resided for thousands of years. They did not immediately dissolve into dust, so I had to assume the god was protecting them and would continue to do so.

We backed out of the room and the wall silently sealed itself before us.

I don’t know how long we spent in the temple. Not much had changed when I emerged, except the presence of a beautiful woman as black as the night, sitting on a horse with a dozen spearmen behind her.

She immediately jumped from her horse and knelt before me. The spearsmen dropped to one knee.

“Rise! Rise!” I called. “Whatever you may think, I am not your god and will not take his worship!”

That was a dangerous thing to say, but I’d been in the presence of an ancient being, I was sure, and I would not upset him. There were places I’d been where such a declaration would have meant my instant death. If I wasn’t a god, then I must be an enemy. Not so with this woman. She rose at once and faced me.